Perfect Skin

by Nick Earls

  Ash takes the handpiece, recoils when she zaps with it the first time. But she keeps going, working at it till she’s got control. On her second banana, she gets me to narrow the beam and she writes her name, like the first proud word of a child with a crayon. I try to show off and tell her I’ll do eighteen-point Times Roman with my name, but the end result isn’t much like it. Our bananas are both more like the work of kids taking a knife to a tree trunk, or scratching into the paint on a station seat.

  She takes another banana and writes ‘apple’. I take one and write ‘fish’. She takes one and writes ‘rama’.

  I ask her if she means the Hindu god, and she says, No, Bananarama. It’s an eighties concept.

  And by now the room is filled with the smell of scorched peel, and the Bean, in her capsule, is hungry.

  Can I take them home? Ash says, collecting the bananas.

  Sure. But they mightn’t look that way for long.

  I was planning to eat them. I mean, I love them, but I was also planning to eat them. I don’t get paid till next week.

  18

  On Friday morning, Wendy says, We think Flag’s going to make it, Jon. He’ll never be quite the Flag he was before, but he’ll be okay.

  In the afternoon I take Lily to my parents’ place, where my father’s already racking the new wine in the garage.

  It’s funny, my mother says, as she gets out Lily’s third or fourth present while we’re drinking tea. There seemed to be things that were just right for her, everywhere we looked on the whole trip.

  It’s probably better if you don’t talk to him beforehand, I warn Ash, as we go into the West End bookstore for Oscar’s performance. He can get a bit short with us before he goes on. We’ve learned that.

  The bookstore is long and narrow, and it’s hot and humid in there with a few dozen people fitted in, lounging against shelves, waiting.

  George sees us and comes over, wearing black jeans and a black shirt, and looking defiantly not-quite-right.

  Very Neil Diamond, I tell him. I like it.

  Thanks so much. And good to see you tried so bloody hard. He turns to Ash. I suppose you made him take the tie off after work, to give him that contemporary, casual, evening look.

  Yeah, but he didn’t undo the knot.

  Seriously? You’re not still . . . He laughs. He looks like a man who just robbed the Roy Orbison museum for his clothes, but somehow he’s the winner because of my tie habits.

  So glad you’re here, I tell Ash. How’s the poet, Porge?

  Tonight? Shocking. Not an easy night. New material, you know? He’s been clearing his throat all evening and asking if I’ve taken his Scruffing Lotion 3½. As if I’m not more than scruffy enough.

  George knows as much – or as little – about sophisticated male grooming products as I do. He’s had three different minor skin rashes on his face in just the last couple of years, and he’s treated each one as if it’s nothing worse than an acceptable untidiness. After giving it its three-word Latin name. It’s Oscar who gets stressed about it. Oscar with the multi-level trolley of grooming products, who’s forever telling George he could make more of himself. Not much more, but more.

  Just before start time, George points to the door as Justin sneaks in. Wearing a black beanie and with a jewel – probably a ruby – in the side of his nose. I didn’t notice that the other night. I wonder if it’s a regular feature, or something he holds back for special occasions. Maybe I never saw him from the left.

  Justin, George says, when he comes over. I’m not sure you know Jon and Ash. You might have met Jon before, but you probably don’t recognise him without one of his ties on.

  I want to take him aside now and I want to say to him, How the fuck has it become a problem that I wear ties to work when you do too and Justin’s wearing a goddamn beanie in a room that’s rapidly approaching body temperature?

  There’s a pop from the microphone at the small stage down at the far end, a yowl of feedback as the host starts to talk.

  Welcome, he says, like a grand old showman, or perhaps a parody of one. Welcome everyone, back to this seething hotbed of the new, to the latest in our series of experimental performance poetry, Words Let Loose, where some of Brisbane’s and Australia’s finest let loose their newest and boldest on the second Friday of every month. And tonight, like every night, we’ve got a special treat in store. One of last season’s success stories is back. Back with something very new. Back with the fruits of his labours on an Arts Queensland grant. So tonight, here it is, his grant acquittal reading. Please make welcome Oscar Wong and his . . . ‘Millennium Suite’.

  There’s muted applause – not exactly what the razzamatazz intro was calling for – then silence.

  Then a thump from the stock room out the back, an empty cardboard box falling over. From Oscar this would usually be part of the performance, but I think tonight it’s incidental. He surges from the stock room in a glittering, gold-embroidered gown, looking like a marginally oversized Christmas tree decoration. He strikes a pose and fires something down each sleeve and into his hands. Fans, bright yellow fans, and he snaps them open, then shut again, then places his head between them, turning them into a pair of thin jaws. He hisses. Four times, once to each point of the compass, rotating with a slow and practised elegance. It’s as if someone has lifted the lid of a rather creepy music box.

  I should have known it’d be like this. I’m not sure if it’s worse than I remember from last time (hair extensions, box, dead flowers), or if there just seemed to be less at stake then. George and me standing up the back in our work clothes going, Oh my god, where did this come from? Now George has gone the Big O with the wardrobe, and I’ve brought a girl. I can’t believe I brought Ash to this. I can’t have thought it through at all.

  The poetry begins. Words let loose, but fighting to get out sometimes, piling on top of each other, rushing out, staccato and spitting. The audience leans back, out of range wherever possible.

  Yes children

  The forest is large and all of it

  Forest

  There is no playground there

  No swings, roundabout, monkey bars

  No unfettered pleasure in any

  Of its brightnesses

  There are paths that are not paths

  Not paths that are paths

  Paths to nowhere and

  To rectangular corners and

  To reckoning

  There is the appearance of

  Creatures and

  Food

  Bright in small orbits

  Harvestable

  But look

  While you gorge yourself

  On golden globes of possibility

  Even while the leaves are still

  The wind gone

  Danger sets to tap

  Any shoulder

  Oscar twitches among dialects and demeanours, hisses and scowls, sweeps low with his fans. And his gown slips open, giving us a good look at his Mickey Mouse boxer shorts. (Is that part of the show?) Up his Mickey Mouse boxer shorts, actually, and for a fraction of a second there’s a little too much performance happening tonight.

  Sweat runs down his face, and that’s when I realise there’s make-up involved, a hint of gold about his cheeks. He rattles on, dangerous and amorphous and confrontational, and the crowd stands silent, in fear of what might happen next, or simply in fear of the next dose of spit or view up the shorts.

  Death that stalks

  On jelly legs is

  No less death

  Even in bright hues

  Death comes in

  The colour of your children’s clothes

  With a sad smile

  And from any portal

  And all is gone

  On the third chance

  All untoward and

  Unavoidable

  Play while you can

  Embrace the moment and

  Play

  Some days there is no

  Smoking gun
>
  Only life and

  Death

  He digresses into bewildering similes and then machine noises, chops with the closed fans, swings his arms like pistons, flaps the fans open like wings, comes right back rhyming like a bandit when you least expect it.

  There are pauses for bowing. They might be the ends of individual pieces, but no-one knows. Except George, who starts the applause each time with a few whacks of his solid hands, and the audience, relieved to get a clear signal of some kind, bursts out clapping too.

  There’s been a lot of rehearsal at our place this week, George says. I know the score. I hope you’re keeping track of what it’s about.

  It’s about something?

  There’s not a scrap of poetry in you, is there?

  I concentrate hard, and in the slower, quiet parts I can make out the words, but that doesn’t seem to help.

  Go checking

  Take all your hands and mouths and

  Get to work

  This bird will brook you

  No fair clutch of eggs

  Should you delay

  Their pleasure’s simple

  In your cup-shaped hand

  But hurry

  Collect them as a child might

  This season

  This quick season

  Just before breakfast

  And they will give you

  Life

  And then he speeds up and I’m sure he says Pac Man at one point, and cheese (or possibly lozenge). Anyway, it’s very powerful, whatever it’s about. I can talk about the power later. And the costume, I suppose, if that’s the right word. This must be how deaf grandparents feel at primary school musicals.

  The end is climactic. Much spit, much sweat, much shouting. And he freezes with the fans snapped open in front of his face, their two bright semi-circles forming a circle and hiding him.

  Wow, I hear myself saying inadvertently, as the clapping begins.

  And someone near me says, Yeah, in the same hushed, slightly overwhelmed tone of voice.

  Some of the crowd rush Oscar, most of them rush the door. By the time we get to the front he’s having a very serious discussion with someone about going CD ROM on this one.

  Like it, Oscar, George says, when it’s our turn. Very non-traditional. Very . . . He shakes his head, as though there can’t be words.

  Political? Oscar suggests.

  Very political.

  And very powerful, I say. Very powerful.

  Good, very good, he says, and nods. He wipes his sweaty brow and a streak of gold comes off on the back of his hand. So, a success then.

  Oh, absolutely.

  Then let’s eat. It really takes it out of you up here.

  He starts to move for the door, still in costume.

  Oz, the gear, George says. You haven’t changed.

  Porge, I’m on a roll. Don’t stop me now.

  It’s a different world beyond that door, Oz Man, George says, and shepherds him back to the stock room, where he’s left his non-performance clothes.

  I don’t think I got all that, Ash tells me while he’s changing. Everything Oscar was doing in his . . . show. What was it about exactly?

  It was poetry. There’s no ‘about’ in poetry.

  Sometimes there’s an ‘about’. Plenty of times. Sylvia Plath. And he seemed like such a quiet person the other night.

  Yes, but maybe lurking deep in all of us there’s some scary performance piece waiting to be poetry slammed out.

  Oscar re-emerges, taking the last of the make-up off with a baby wipe and looking much more like his normal self (and far less likely to spit). On the short walk to the restaurant, though, I notice that his gestures are still a little more flamboyant than usual, everything’s scaled up twenty per cent, as if he hasn’t slowed down completely from his performance high. And sometimes – by accident, I hope – he slips into rhyming couplets.

  I wonder, he says, as we wait for our entrees, if I could take it somewhere. Take it on the festival circuit, maybe. Particularly now, or in the next nine months, since that’s when it will be at its most meaningful, obviously. Do you think?

  Well, yeah, George says. You see a broad range of stuff at festivals.

  Of course, it’s still evolving. Tonight was just the start. Already there are things I’d do differently, one or two. He taps the ends of his chopsticks on the table, jogs his knee up and down. I’m still reaching out with some of it. Still trying to get in touch with the other side of me.

  Is that why you’ve got the traditional costume? Ash asks him.

  Traditional costume? No. I just saw this in an op shop one day, and there’s so much gold. It’s pretty special. George thinks it might be from The Mikado.

  And what’s your other side, exactly?

  Other side, he says, like the far side of a canyon bouncing it back to me but making it no plainer. The other side. The other. The side that is the other.

  George interrupts. This is a big thing of Oscar’s. He thinks you should be able to hear that he’s got inverted commas around ‘other’.

  Oh, other, Ash says. That other. The side of you that represents the other, the outsider side.

  Yes, but when you do it the inverted commas are quite audible.

  And how does the costume represent the other?

  Well, Oscar begins, that’s a very good question, Ashley, since the choice, I know, is somewhat atypical. For a start, it doesn’t represent every regular day of my life. I mean, look at Jon. Imagine him just the way he is now, but with a tie.

  I can do that.

  Well, that’s where I am most of the time. That, but just a bit more stylish. No offence.

  Since when did I take offence?

  You’re always taking offence. But, anyway, I can’t explore the other from there. There needs to be more . . . let out. It’s got to be bold. It’s got to be unafraid to be honest. I have to liberate myself to allow the words to surge out of me, with the writing and with the performance. That’s what any creative process is about, the surge. And maybe a small amount of glamour. I think that’s me. Deep down, I mean. There should be glamour there. It should be just a bit . . .

  Shimmery? George suggests.

  Oscar goes Mmmm, and gives a small, satisfied nod. Shimmery is, I suspect, a nuance he’d like to call his own. And from there, you see, the poetry begins. I can be bold. Unafraid. I can create my ‘Millennium Suite’, again and again.

  And the section about the ‘golden globe of possibility’, Ash says. Is that to do with getting in touch with the other, or is it something specific?

  Oh, both of those things. Very definitely, both. But it’s also about good and evil. And I know that’s a little reductionist, but I quite like the starkness of that contrast sometimes. Don’t you? The innocence that’s behind it, behind that uncomplicated view of the world. It’s quite special. And very millennium, I think. That’s what I’d call it. Millennium.

  And what exactly is the ‘golden globe of possibility’?

  At a non-metaphorical level? It’s pretty much about Pac Man. There’s a pause, as this takes us all neatly by surprise. You don’t know Pac Man, Ash?

  It’s the . . .

  I know Pac Man, she says.

  Okay, it’s like this. This is where your thesis comes in, I think, he says, but he could just be doing it to scare her. I believe when any new technology comes along, we first try to interpret it in terms of the fundamental struggle, the struggle between good and evil. So the early video games, before they got all fancy, that’s what they were all about. Two classic examples – Space Invaders and Pac Man. So most of my poetry is about them. But particularly Pac Man. Cause there you have the innocence. You see?

  Um, not totally.

  I was worried about that. The clarity of it in performance in particular, since the imagery has a certain density to it. I thought perhaps I should wear a glove, a single white glove on my left hand, and hold it this way. He cocks his hand into a very poetic shape. But eve
n then it’s in the eyes, you see. And in what the other hand is doing. It’s that dichotomy of knob hand and button hand. Gloved hand and naked hand. Let me show you. Here’s another one. I didn’t do this tonight. It’s a little unfinished. He pulls a sheet of paper out of his folded Mikado costume, arranges his napkin on his raised left hand like an imaginary friend, shouts out a few bizarre lines, ending with, Redolent, fabulous, yes mother, yes mother earth, your children are gone and all by these small hands. Like someone who’s re-mastered a recording of the poetry of seventies legend Rod McKuen, with intent to do harm.

  He looks at her as though she must now understand. There’s clapping from a nearby table – people who were at the reading – and Oscar gives a nod their way, turns his napkined hand to a small but majestic wave. From most other tables there’s silence, and staring.

  George clears his throat, leans forward. What I think Oscar’s saying – I don’t mean to butt in here, Oscar, but sometimes, as you’ve said, your work’s a little elusive – is that there is something very innocent about Pac Man, at least about the player’s role. You chug around munching, engulfing the, um . . .

  Golden globes of possibility.

  And you confront these very finite nasties along the way.

  But isn’t that just promoting consumption? Ash says. The fact that you’re rewarded for eating the yellow dots?

  No. It’s not a commodity, you see, Oscar explains. It’s a kind of life force.

  But doesn’t evil triumph in the end? Don’t you always, like, get munched, or something?

  In the end, yes, but the struggle is heroic. And the ultimate victory over evil will only come through such sacrifice. But maybe, at another level, it’s also nature, a cycle. And it doesn’t end. The globes give life to the Pac Man, the Pac Man gives life to the other creatures. And when it’s all done, you can press Start again. There’s a lot to find in there. Big, enduring issues. But this millennium, it makes us hurry. From another perspective, as you heard earlier, Pac Man is like Star Wars . . .

  And here are the entrees, George says. The food perspective.

  Oscar takes a spring roll and taps it against the side of his bowl. And the government, for this work it gives me money. It recognises the importance.